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peter-outdoorliving
Reviews
Palm Beach (2019)
A Tourism NSW video
I really wanted to like this. Some of the great Australian actors, including the luminous Jacqueline McKenzie, together in the one movie. Shame they wasted such talent on such a mediocre script. Richard Grant was tired, the scenarios, relationships and dialogue not believable. On a level with a Home and Away episode, but with better scenery.
This was clearly made as some sort of tourism video; pity that revelation doesn't come till the closing credits. None of the talent shines to their capability, save for the cameraman.
Up Close & Personal (1996)
a boring stinker
I love Michelle Pfeiffer. Robert Redford is a superstar. Which is why I shelled out for a cinema ticket in 1996 while I was working in Canberra.
The first clue should have been the turnout. There were 5 other people in the theatre. 2 left about halfway through.
The recent movie that jogged my mind about Up Close and Personal was "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World". Steve Carell and Keira Knightly...how could you go wrong? At the end of that movie, and after I'd said "is that it?" I remembered 1996.
2 big stars of the moment, an interesting premise, but a total turkey. What the 2 movies had in common was a couple of actors walking through their lines with as much feeling and believability as the bored woman who sold me the tickets at the counter.
Absolutely no chemistry, no connection with the audience; you could almost hear Pfeiffer and Redford thinking 'is this over yet?' Contrast this with Pfeiffer's other 1996 effort One Fine Day, and you see that her heart is still in it. Whereas Redford's efforts since this stinker have been mediocre at best.
Up Close & Personal was so bad that it took nearly 17 years for Carell's non-effort to knock it off my Worst Movie mantle.